Most of the time I will be the first person to say you
should not write for an audience, you should write for yourself. I really
believe that. But two things happened this week to remind me that sometimes I
don’t do that, and sometimes you won’t want to do that either.
A
friend of mine who you have met in a prior blog post, had a poem accepted by
The Rye Whiskey Review. This is a woman who now lives in Indiana. She had given
up all hope that she would ever be published in North Carolina, and did not
know that Rye Whiskey was based there. When I told her, her response was “No.
Wait! Are you telling me I've just been published by a North Carolina literary
journal????? OMG. Holy cow! Woot! Happy dance all over the place. Accepted for
the first time by my home state!!!! OMG.”
Another
friend of mine who you have also met in a prior blog post told me yesterday
“For some reason, I really want to get published in Vermont” (because she went
there one time and really loved it). She went on to say that she’d really like
to get published in a state university literary review, and “I think it would
be so funny to get in to North Dakota”.
Think
of these end results as goals, more
than audiences.
I know
there are some journals who will never publish me. I don’t write in a way that
matches their aesthetics. I try every couple of years, and am pleased to report
they remain consistent, and so do I.
While
my two friends think about where
they’d like to be published, I think about it a different way. I want to be
published with Jeff. I love when we are published together. It may sound silly,
but it makes me happy to see both our names on a back cover or Table of
Contents.
Jeff
and I don’t write the same, and we don’t have the same poem triggers, so the first
thing I have to do, and the first thing we all should do, is READ THE
GUIDELINES!
Let’s
talk about Sport Literate. I wrote about them in my post of March 19th
but from a different angle. Jeff has been published by them multiple times. I
couldn’t write a sports poem if you gave me a thousand dollars! Okay, I could
write a gymnastics poem, but I don’t think “beam and bars” is very poetic, nor
do I think falling asleep at a World Series game has much to say for it.
Thank goodness I looked at “about us” on the Sport Literate website.
It says “Sprung from the 12th floor of Columbia College Chicago in 1995,
Sport Literate, is a literary journal focusing on “honest reflections
on life’s leisurely diversions.” Praying for a broad definition of “life’s
leisurely diversions”, I jumped in.
Squat-bodied Chevys plant
themselves
like a garden of boiling
colors –
the red not seen in 50 years
and a green so old it makes
nostalgia
feel young.
She follows the hood
ornaments to the dance floor,
a blues band tuning up, that
particular
beat that says I’ll sing about anything and you’ll
crave
it. All the longing you’ll ever need.
You can awkwardly dance to
it,
or look around. And look around she does.
He’s got 10 years on her if a
day,
graceful in that dirty torn
t-shirt kind of way
that says he’s a working man,
taking a break from the
present to drift back
to his past,
when Saturday nights meant
shine her up,
race her reckless, then get
the girl.
And she wants to be that
girl. Cherry-red
lips and a yellow dress match
anywhere
she ends up.
Life was more unhardened
then, the danger
more in their minds,
adrenaline
churning and a pack of smokes
hiding
in the glove box for later.
She can still do that
high-school sidle,
she is by his side in a
heartbeat.
The blues makes him
talkative; the ex
and his girls live three
states away, he’s
been here all his life, has a
good business
left from his father, and a
dog.
She takes his hand, dances
gracefully among
the clowning tourists,
visitors to this world
in plaid shorts and wrist
bands. And in that dance
she becomes everything to
him. Don’t matter
nothin’ ‘bout tomorrow. He knows she’ll be there,
sure as the dice hanging from
the rear-view.
Holy cow, it’s not just about baseball! Muscle cars are a
leisurely diversion. Would I like to be in Sport Lit again? Heck yes, but I
have to write those poems first, and I haven’t.
When you take a look at some of the odd themes out there, I’d
be scared if you had poems on theme
without tweaking something you already have, or writing something new. Usually
that’s called “editing”. In my opinion, poems are fluid until they’re
published. If you have to bend something a tiny bit to get that square peg into
a round hole while keeping your voice and your heart, and that allows you to be
published in your home state, or published with your husband, how cool is that?
BUT… There are some journals I love, that Jeff doesn’t
submit to, and vice versa. There are some that accept me and not him, and more
that accept him and not me. It doesn’t matter, it’s not a contest.
Continue to write your own beautiful way, and don’t lower
your standards for anything. Read the
guidelines. Submit where appropriate for you. And if you have a goal, whatever
that may be, don’t be blind to other opportunities, and the very best of luck
to you.
And please send a comment below so we can all do the happy
dance with you!!!
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Tobi Alfier's most recent collection of poetry is Slices Of Alice. She is also co-editor with Jeff Alfier of the San Pedro River Review. Don't miss Tobi's columns on the craft of poetry: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.
